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A holt költö szerelme 'The Dead Poet's Love', S349

First line:

Zeng a liget a csalogány dalain 'The grove resounds with the nightingale's song

Introduction

From the end of the 1860s until his death in 1886 Liszt maintained much closer relations with his native Hungary than he had managed to do during his years as a touring artist and his time as Kapellmeister at Weimar. He made sporadic attempts to master the Hungarian language, writing a few songs and a couple of choral works in that tongue. But his Hungarian was never to become fluent and it is not surprising that A holt költö szerelme (‘The Dead Poet’s Love’) emerges as Liszt’s best musical work to a Hungarian text. This famous poem by Mór Jókai refers to his friend the great Hungarian poet Sándor Petöfi (1823-1849) who disappeared, believed killed in battle, during the War of Independence which he had championed. Liszt used the slow march theme from his recitation for a piano piece in Petöfi’s memory (Dem Andenken Petöfis, later revised as Petöfi Sándor – see Volumes 11 and 12 of this series, respectively). Liszt issued this recitation with the text in Hungarian alongside a parallel poetic translation in German, which we include amongst the complete texts here given.

Leslie Howard’s recordings of Liszt’s complete piano music, on 99 CDs, is one of the monumental achievements in the history of recorded music. Remarkable as much for its musicological research and scholarly rigour as for Howard’s Herculean piano p ...» More

Details

The grove resounds with the nightingale’s song
And the melancholy flute from the valley;
The rock stream gently kisses
The rose-garland swirling on its foam;
A warm breeze kisses the shrubs, the bee the flowers.
And we, my all, delight of my Eden,
Should we not kiss each other?

Well, should we not kiss each other?
I, and you, and he: three hearts in unity:
My laughing child in my lady’s lap.
Oh please, oh please I beg you, laugh on!
My lute trembles with love,
I want to sing of my child,
A love-song to my son.

Let me sing to my son,
Even if he takes it as a nursery song.
When he can understand, never will he forget.
Ah but you, his mother, your voice is much sweeter.
Will you tell him who his father was and whither he went?
How happy he was as long as he lived with you,
My wife, perhaps my widow by the time the leaves fall.

“Perhaps my widow by the time the leaves fall!
Oh tell me, could you forget me?
Death is cheap where I have been summoned.
Will my orphaned love die in your heart?”
“Oh no, no! Never, never!
Should the grave claim you,
It must welcome us both” …
“Death is cheap where I have been summoned” …
He who cuts swathes on the battlefield
Does not listen to prayer,
Does not consider flower or thorn,
Nor those death shall cover with the moss of oblivion,
Nor those whose star shoots up into the sky of fame.
The lute plays for love, not death …

Lo the fanfare, stampede of stallions,
Stormy curse of the enraged masses.
Blood wedding, where the sword dispenses kisses
And the cold worm of the grave is the bride.
Chorus of laments, tolls of fire,
In sudden silence the lute resounds
Crying: Forward! To death!

“The battle lulls,” woefully croaks
The raven on the leafless maple.
No more harvest on the field of blood;
The stubble is all but cut.
“Grieving herald of battlefields, tell me:
Where is my bard, my singing hero?
Tell me, where is my husband, whom I loved so much?”
The raven responds: “So the two of us loved him.
He fired the blood of valiant heroes;
Now they are but a feast for me and my brood.
I shall cry for him; don’t expect his return:
He sleeps under hundreds of bodies.
Let us both mourn the hero,
Till death claims me – and marriage the widow.”
Come the wedding night the widow’s veil, so delicate,
Is torn by the wind.
What magic, what fire is in a man’s sorrow;
A woman’s heart, alas, is not made of steel …
Let the dead sleep! The heart craves delight …
The dead are not anxious! Flitter fair butterfly,
The wedding music calls you to dance!

The couple whirls to the sounds of music:
The stately woman in the arms of her new lover;
A colourful garland, the bride’s ornament,
Winds downward from her flowing hair.
But happier the silent hours which follow,
When slumber sweetly closes eyes and lips.
Only the two hearts stay awake, beating.
Only the two hearts stay awake, beating …
Whose is the third one?

A phantom from the grave.
A skull with a hat and a wreath.
From the eye’s hollow shines the light of the grave.
Above his heart, the dispossessed crest of arms;
Where he had been shot
The spouting blood is witness.

He speaks … not the lips, but the bleeding wound:
“Delight of my Eden, my all!
How long have I yearned to see you in my abode!
My bed is made for you and my little one,
Big enough for us three. Silence reigns there.

The nights are long, far is the daybreak.
It is midnight now; come to sleep my love.
Come with me to my home, to my lovely home.

Its curved roof is green velvet
Woven with hyacinths golden and blue,
Inside, a mosaic of colourful pebbles.
And its furnishings … listen, my delight,
The dearest bones on earth,
The skulls of fallen heroes” …

“Skull-head! You aren’t him! Let me go!
You have never been my husband! Stranger!
Your face is not his; I have never seen you,
Leave me alone, go back to your grave!”

The phantom’s skull laughs:
“It’s a horrible joke, the world below;
You are right, my lovely lady.

I live with many companions in this house,
I could not find my face, my hand erred,
But I shall return and look for my face;
The search will indeed be difficult,
But I shall find my true head
Among the rows of skulls.”

Thus spake the vision from the grave and disappeared.
He returns again, the next midnight.
He talks about man’s dreams in the grave
And about the way they live below,
Of long forgotten things, of what is new in the past,
Of bygone lusts, of dusty yearnings.

And he sings his love-song, the one of old.
It is him! Even though his head is someone else’s.
All kinds of faces are brought up from below.
So many masks:
Old and young, sombre and gentle,
All crowded in the common grave.
He calls the woman and his tiny son.
Wakened from their dreams, they cry in fear:
“Oh no! Do not take us away!”

The ghost calls on woman and child,
Twenty years without respite.
The thorn of the grave
Shreds his attire.
He is but a shadow,
An apparition, light projected on walls;
But still he murmurs: Oh, come with me yonder!

The woman becomes grey, the child grows old:
A living skeleton, tired of life.
A painful sight for the mother: his heart is sick;
His heart is heavy and draws him to the ground.
“Oh, find your real face at last!
We do not fear your coming: we wait.
We wait with sighs.”

This call of love wakes the sleeping:
An apparition before midnight.
The face alight, the brave eyes flashing,
The lips smiling, as before.
Sword and lute are both discarded:
His mind is elsewhere;
Lovingly he embraces mother and child,
And carries them far away
To the abode with the lush green roof,
Where the roses unfold
And scatter their petals over the ashes.
He took with him all that was his.
And only now can the dead find rest,
Whilst high above on the night sky his star is alight …

The nightingale sings in the grove of spring,
The poet’s song weeps from the shepherd’s flute;
Far away in the twilight sky two clouds
Kiss each other with lightning –
No thunder. A bee buzzes on the flower.
Down below the dead whispers: Love of my heart, my all
Let us kiss forever.

Mór Jókai (1825-1904)

This recitation is performed in Hungarian;
please see booklet PDF for the original text